A man is stabbed to death leaving a bar In the summer of 1985, the life of 35-year-old Michael Durenleau, a male from Swanton, Vermont, came to a violent and tragic end. On the evening of July 12th, Michael and his wife, Rebecca, drove to Veronica's Tavern in Essex Junction. They were there to celebrate a recent reconciliation after a difficult period in their marriage. After sharing a single beer and staying for only about fifteen minutes, the couple left the tavern and walked into the dark, unlit parking lot behind the building.
As they reached their car, an assailant emerged from the darkness. The attacker struck Michael in the back of the head with a blunt instrument and then fatally stabbed him twice in the heart with a knife. Rebecca Durenleau ran back into the tavern for help, but by the time medical assistance arrived, it was too late. Michael Durenleau was pronounced dead at the hospital. Rebecca told police the attacker was a man she couldn't identify in the darkness.
The investigation that followed stretched on for years, leaving Michael's family without answers. Investigators soon came to suspect that the murder was not a random act of violence. Their attention turned to a man named Harmon Olmstead, with whom Rebecca Durenleau had been having an affair. Police believed Olmstead was the man who held the knife that killed Michael, but they never made an arrest. The case grew cold, leaving a cloud of suspicion but no official charges against the man they believed was the principal offender.
Years later, in a significant development, the focus of the investigation shifted decisively to Michael's widow. In 1991, seven years after the murder, Rebecca Durenleau was arrested. She was not charged with committing the murder herself, but as the mastermind behind it. The prosecution built a case against her based entirely on circumstantial evidence, alleging she had incited her lover, Harmon Olmstead, to kill her husband. The trial that followed resulted in a conviction, but the legal battle was far from over. Rebecca Durenleau appealed the verdict, and the Vermont Supreme Court ultimately overturned her conviction, citing insufficient evidence. To this day, no one has been held legally responsible for the murder of Michael Durenleau.
